Guide

How Kaniban works.

The whole product on one page. Kaniban opens straight into a board, so most of this you will find on your own. It is here for the parts that are not obvious, and for anyone who likes to read first.

Boards

A board, or workspace, is one area of your work. It owns its columns, its cards and its ticket prefix, the short code stamped on every card it makes. The rail on the left holds all of them, and a board can carry a picture as its mark there. The free tier has two boards, Supporter five, and Plus as many as you want; the last one can never be deleted. The summary view can look at one board or all of them at once.

Columns

Name them, rename them, drag them into order. Deleting a column moves its cards to the first column rather than losing them, and the last column cannot be deleted. On Plus, a column can carry a limit, and the board marks it when the count is over. Focus mode, on Supporter and above, shows one column at a time; /focus:the column in the command deck gets you there and Exit focus brings the rest back.

Cards

• Title and notes. Notes are markdown, so a card can hold a paragraph, a link or a list.
• A code. Each card gets one when it is made, such as PRD-014, from its board's prefix and a counter that never goes backwards. The code never changes, whatever happens to the title, so it is safe to quote.
• Tags. Drawn from a palette of seven colours. The first tag on a card colours it, as a wash and a dot.
• A due date. Puts the card on the calendar and the timeline.
• A timer. Start it and stop it on the card; every run is kept as a session and totalled. See time tracking.
• Steps and a picture, on Supporter and above. Steps are a checklist on the card; a picture is one image, resized on the way in.
• Done. A card that crosses into the last column is stamped with the day, which is what gives the board a history and the summary something to count.
• Duplicate a card from inside it: the copy has fresh steps and an empty timer.
• Templates, on Plus. Save a card you keep rewriting, with its steps and tags, and start the next one filled in.
• Archive, on Plus. Finished cards leave the board without leaving; pull any one back later.

Each board chooses how much of a card its tiles show: Glance, the default; Read, which adds the first lines of the notes and the next open step; and on Supporter, Work, where steps can be ticked on the tile itself. Focus mode steps the setting up by one.

The four views

• Board. Columns and cards. Drag a card to reorder it or move it between columns. A card moved out of view says where it went.
• Calendar. The month, with dated cards on their days; step through months or the year. Drop a card on a day and that is its new date. Cards without a date wait at the side.
• Timeline, on Supporter and above. Dated cards as bars across the weeks, packed so nothing overlaps, so a crowded stretch shows itself early.
• Summary, on Supporter and above. A heatmap of hours, how the last thirty days moved, and the runway before the due dates, for one board or all. Plus adds cycle time, effort per card, and rhythm, the times of day you actually work.

The command deck

Press Ctrl K (⌘ K on a Mac) and type. The deck searches cards by title or by code, so 14 finds PRD-014. It jumps to any view or board, moves a card along to its next column, sets filters, and takes slash commands:

• /nc:a title makes a new card.
• /ncl:a name makes a new column, named and in view.
• /focus:a column shows only that column.

Type the command alone, /nc, and the deck turns into a field that waits for the missing part. Esc closes it, and closes anything else that is open.

Filters

Search by title or notes, by ticket code, by column, by tag, or by a range of due dates, in any combination, with one Clear to remove them all. The deck can set them too.

Export, import and backup

Export is in the rail menu. It writes the whole board to a single .kani file: plain JSON, or a zip when a board carries pictures. Import reads it back, and also accepts the older .json and .zip forms. The file holds no licence keys or access tokens, so it is safe to keep anywhere, and importing one never activates a licence. On Plus, automatic backup writes a fresh file to a folder you choose whenever the board changes; it works in browsers that can be handed a folder, such as Chrome and Edge, and in the desktop app.

Where the board lives

In the browser that opened it, under the kanban.v1 key, with pictures in IndexedDB. Nothing is uploaded. Before the app ever migrates a board to a new shape it keeps a copy of the old one, and it will not open a board written by a newer build. The local-first page is the long version.

Installing

A browser tab is the whole app. To give it a window of its own, install it from the address bar in Chrome or Edge, or on Windows use the desktop app. Each place keeps its own board; export and import carry one between them. All of them work offline once loaded.

Keyboard

• Ctrl K opens the command deck; arrow keys move through it and Enter runs the highlighted item.
• Esc closes the deck, a card, or a dialog.
• Cards can be moved without a mouse: focus one, press Space to pick it up, arrow keys to move it, Space again to drop it, Esc to cancel.

Theme

Light and dark, following the system by default, with a switch in the board and on this site. The choice is shared between them.

Tiers

A paid licence is activated with a code sent to the email it belongs to, and covers up to two named browser profiles, which you can replace or revoke from the app. Paid access checks in online once a day while the board is used and carries on for up to seven days without a connection.

Questions